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OWASP ModSecurity CRS

The OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) ModSecurity™ CRS (Core Rule Set) is a set of rules that Apache's ModSecurity™ module can use to help protect your server. While these rules do not make your server impervious to attacks, they greatly increase the amount of protection for your web applications.

About OWASP

Why should I use the OWASP ModSecurity rule set?

Protection from insecure web application design — ModSecurity rule sets can provide a layer of protection for web applications such as WordPress, phpBB, or other types of web applications. It can potentially protect against vulnerabilities in out-of-date web applications that protect against vulnerabilities in unpatched, out-of-date applications. If the developer of an application makes a security mistake, ModSecurity may block a security attack before it can access the vulnerable application.

Protection against operating system level attack — ModSecurity rule sets can protect against attacks that exploit the operating system of your server. For example, in 2014, there was a security flaw in the Bash shell program that Linux servers use. Security experts created ModSecurity rules to disallow the use of the exploit thought Apache. Server administrators used these ModSecurity rules and added additional security to their system until the release of a security patch for Bash shell.

Protect against generalized malicious traffic — Some of the security threats that server administrators face may not directly attack a program or application on your server. DoS (Denial of Service) attacks, for example, are common attacks. You can reduce the impact of such malicious traffic through the use of ModSecurity rules.

The Core Rule Set provides protection against many common attack categories, including: